THE dark skies above the high deserts of Arizona are among the best an amateur astronomer can ask for. Here, numerous hobbyists scan the skies for comets, near-Earth asteroids and supernovae.
Only a handful of years ago, this task would have required many hours of preparation setting up a telescope, calibrating the precision mechanism for pointing it, finding the area of sky to study, and then photographing it – itself a difficult task with a film-based camera. At best, the images would have taken hours to develop, and then would begin the tiring, time-consuming task of comparing by eye the…
